SARATOGA SPRINGS -- The City Council has limited oversight over the Saratoga Springs Housing Authority -- but no enforcement powers, according to a legal opinion by Assistant City Attorney Tony Izzo.

What, if any, power the city has over the Saratoga Springs Housing Authority has been a hotly debated topic in the last several months over its doubling of the executive director's salary over six years and for its handling of a bedbug infestation of Stonequist Apartments.

The opinion, discussed at Tuesday's Council meeting, confirms that state law gives the City Council approval over some Housing Authority salaries but leaves the question open as to what happens when the Housing Authority does not seek that approval. The council did not have copies of the opinion available for the public.

According to Mayor Scott Johnson, citing the opinion, the Housing Authority came before the City Council routinely through the 1990s for approval of its employee's salaries, but in 2000 "stopped coming altogether for reasons unknown."

Since November 2006, SSHA Executive Director Ed Spychalski's salary has gone from $74,777 to $151,956, and he has a rolling five-year contract signed by the chairman of the SSHA board of commissioners, which is scheduled to meet Thursday.

"Like it or not, we have no enforcement over there," Johnson said at the City Council meeting.

Council members John Franck and Michele Madigan do not like it.

"It sounds like we're saying there is nothing we can do," Madigan said. "That is not good enough."

Franck suggested the city could file legal action against the Housing Authority to compel them to adhere to requirements. "I refuse to roll over for these guys," he said.

Johnson said case-law indicates that would be a "frivolous lawsuit" that would be tossed.

The council will suggest to the authority how to correct what Johnson called "technical violations." But just how to correct those options was up for debate Tuesday.

Franck said corrective action should include rolling back salaries to the last time they were approved by the City Council. "None of these salaries were approved," he said.

Johnson said that may not be possible. The enforcement, he said, lies with the New York State Commissioner of Homes and Community Renewal. He said the city would draft a letter to that agency requesting intervention.

The mayor said he sent a letter Tuesday to the Housing Authority suggesting they toss Spychalski's current contract and renegotiate it at a lower salary, but said "we have no legal authority to compel them to do anything."

Johnson also asked Izzo to explore what his authority is to remove members of the Housing Authority Board of Commissioners for cause. The mayor is responsible for appointing five of the seven members of the board, but said removing them would be more difficult.

In order to remove a member of the board Johnson said the city must prove "intentional wrongdoing."

"It has to be more than just mistakes," he said, including not reporting salary increases to the City Council for 12 years.

"Anyone who thinks this board only committed minor oversights is blinking at reality," Franck said. "What they have done, to me, sounds egregious."